Power BI Desktop WebView2 Out Of Memory

[Anonymous]

Power BI is experiencing a problem with WebView2 running Out of memory. We have identified some of the top causes of this and have the details below. If that does not address your Out of memory problem, contact us at  pbidesktopwebview2issues@service.microsoft.com

Out of Memory cause: 

Custom visuals causing memory leak - If you are using any custom visuals and are running into Out of Memory crahses, please try removing the custom visuals to check if it resolves the issue. If it does, please reach out with the visual which was cauing the memory leak so we can address it. 

If you are not using any custom visuals and are still running into this, it could be due to having a lot of report pages and visuals per page. This causes the browser heap memory to exceed the 4GB limit and crash. This is sadly a limitation of chromium. 

Possible workaround 

• Limit the number of visuals in the report. The recommendation is to split the report into smaller reports and using cross-drillthrough - Use cross-report drillthrough in Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Docs.The cross-drillthrough feature carries through filters when using cross drill through.

[komanguy]

@KarenKazab  You're right,

I'm experiencing the same issue again!

February version doesn't fix anything!

[GebauerAnalytic]

This is completely unacceptable. If a report has one instance of the smart filter, the entire report just doesn't load for a minute, then crashes. I can't even get into the report to remove the offending element before it freezes! 

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

Sorry that you all were facing this problem. The issue about WebView2 running out of memory was due to a bug in Chromium engine by google which we cannot control. Sadly the browsers are based on that engine. 
There are some custom visuals which have bad rendering patterns which combined with this bug were causing out of memory. Known ones are OKViz smart filters and other OKViz custom visuals. 
The fix rolled out last week in the WebView2 101 release. If you are on an older version, i would recommend updating to latest. You can check the WebView2 version in the control panel. 

If you are not using any custom visuals and are still running into Out of memory issues. (Or running into OOM on version 101), it could indicate you have too many visuals on the page consuming too much memory. 

If you want further help with this issue, you can reach out to us at pbidesktopwebview2issues@service.microsoft.com with the pbix file. 

Thank you 

Rahul 

[Congzheng]

@asantman123 I have the same issue with Tracer. Trying to visualize a 200MB .db file, and it crashed. I don't know if it's the problem of the file size or the BI plateform. 

Did you find some solutions?

[asantman123]

@Congzheng no solution on my end yet, I worked to reduce my database file down to 146Mb on one and 126Mb on the other. My PBIX files are 27Mb and 76Mb - these should not be considered large in database visulaization world IMO.

I believe this on the Bi platform side of things as well, but have offered to send support my pbix files for further study.  Will let peoples know what we might find.

[Anonymous]

Same issue, still not solved. This issue happens in Desktop Version not service. As browser we use Edge. We do not use custom visuals. We have a few visuals shown on page, but several bookmarks with additional visuals on selection. So some are hidden, but that is necessary with different bookmark views. It is not excessive. We never had issues in older versions, with plenty more visuals than now.

Please fix this asap. We lost many hrs of work, because the application error acts like a crash and the recovey file we get is not usable. 

Also, with the newest updates, PowerBI desktop application "stutters" a lot when dealing with larger reports. Every now and then the application freezes and it takes a few seconds to run normal again. It is a memory issue that was not present in previous versions. 

[Anonymous]

Hi, the same problem. Teams/Chrome/Edge etc start to crash too along with Power BI desktop. I dont think I am using any custom visuals and the issue just seems to be happening when trying to connect and load in transform. I deleted the cache and cancelled the refresh a few times, rebooted etc and still bad...

[Anonymous]

Can we please have an update on this problem? It is causing massive loss of work on a constant basis. We have multiple reports crashing while working on them in Desktop. We can't recover the files and have to constantly save back-ups in fear of losing the work. This is unacceptable.  Please provide us with a version that reverts back to a version previous to WebView2 until this is fixed for good.  

[rachelbaker]

Hi, I'm still getting issues using OkViz filtering - is this visual likely to be fixed soon? Is there a similar one that we could use instead.
I've got the latest May 2022 version of pbi desktop installed

[MBreauAtBBB]

I am still experiencing this issue as well. I reached out to the email provided (pbidesktopwebview2issues@service.microsoft.com) but have not heard back.

Additional information:

The crash occurs somewhat randomly, but seems more likely to happen as the PowerBI report increases in size (as we get to the +/- 7 pages mark). We are using the Semantic Rhino model viewer visual, which seems likely to be a contributing factor, but is required for our use-case. That visual maintains an internal copy of the Rhino model, and its possible that adding it to multiple pages therefore creates multiple copies of the model data. Its also possible there is some kind of memory leak or something associated with the visual.

Once the model crashes, an auto-recover file is available, but PowerBI completely freezes 100% of the time when trying to open it. Both the crashing and subsequent freezing happen identically on two separate machines.

Besides the model-viewing visual, there's nothing very complex or large about the data; it is a few hundred rows of data (orders of magnitude simpler than what I am told PowerBI typically handles).

Hopefully this crashing is just growing pain during the WebView2 implementation, but it would be helpful to know Microsoft is investigating the problem (which still exists after the update at the end of May), as well as an estimated timeline for a fix. Its also critical to figure out some kind of workaround in the meantime.

We have already tried:

• Rebuilding the PowerBI file from scratch
• Reinstalling PowerBI (including restarts at each step)
• Reinstalling WebViewer/ making sure the latest version is installed
• Increasing the memory allocated to various settings with PowerBI's settings menu
• Using the Windows ADK to get more information (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install)
• Eliminating any non-standard visuals besides the model viewer

Our temporary workaround is to build several smaller PowerBI reports, though this is unlikely to work as a permanent solution, since it would make for a poor experience for clients receiving the reports. If you have any thoughts on additional things to try, we'll welcome any suggestions.